No one knocked Gunnar Nyberg down. That was rule number one.
He went over to the wall and observed his face in the mirror. His bandage had been reduced to a nose cone, a plastic splint of the sort that heroic soccer players wear after the doctor stops the flow of blood. It was held in place with bizarre rubber bands around his neck. Bruises were still spreading out around the cone. He refrained from imagining what it looked like under there. Why the hell did he always have to look like a battlefield just when a case was moving toward its conclusion?
Because this case was moving toward its conclusion, right?
He returned to his desk and sank down into his chair. It creaked alarmingly. He had heard ghost stories about office chairs that had gone crazy and transformed into horrible instruments of torture, mechanisms that flew up eighteen inches through your rectum. He thought of his broken bed and rocked lightly in the chair. It actually did sound a bit murderous. Revenge of the Office Chair IV. The Hollywood blockbuster that played to sold-out houses. Worn-out movie-theater chairs jubilated and shot off springs that drilled into the screen. Not a single monitor was dry. Curtains blew their noses on themselves. Office after office revolted throughout the entire United States.
Distracted was an understatement. There was usually a reason for his attacks of distraction. Something, somewhere was chafing, irritating him. Something was causing him not to be really one hundred percent satisfied with the list.
He sorted the names, to come up with a suitable priority ranking. Three were in the inner city, two in the northern suburbs, one in the southern suburbs. They were probably working now. So, places of work. Huddinge, two in Kista, two at the Royal Institute of Technology, Nynäshamn, Danderyd. Order of priority: Danderyd, the Tech, Kista, Huddinge, Nynäshamn. Or Kista, Danderyd, the Tech, Huddinge, Nynäshamn. Maybe that was better.
He put the list aside and stared at the wall. He tried his voice, working his way through a scale. An ugly, nasal tone. This injury too had affected his singing voice. Something about that made him uncomfortable. Punishment? Reminder? A reminder, maybe. A commemoration.
Suddenly they were there again. Gunilla. The burst eyebrows. Tommy and Tanja’s eyes, as large as platters. Do you have to come right now?
His past had a single redeeming feature: he had never touched the children, had never lifted a hand against Tommy and Tanja.
Was that why he always took beatings that distorted his voice? So that he would never forget why he sang? For the very reason that it came at such an incredibly inconvenient time, he seized the opportunity.
There were two Tommy Nybergs in Uddevalla. He called the first one. He was seventy-four and deaf as a post. He called the other. A woman answered. An infant was crying in the background. A grandchild? he thought.
“I’m looking for Tommy Nyberg,” he said in a surprisingly steady voice.
“He’s not home,” said the woman. She had a lovely voice. Mezzo-soprano, he guessed.
“May I just ask, how old is Tommy?”
“Twenty-six,” she said. “Who is this?”
“His father,” he said.
“His father is dead. Come off it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Dead as a doornail. I’m the one who found him. Stop fucking with me, you fucking old creep.” She threw the phone down.
Okay, Tommy wasn’t necessarily still living in Uddevalla. Besides, he was twenty-four, he quickly calculated. Fucking old creep? he thought, laughing. Gallows humor. He had one chance left.
There was a Tanja Nyberg-Nilsson. Married. And not a word.
He called. A woman’s voice answered, “Tanja.” Sweet. Tranquil.
Who was he to disturb the peace? Hang up, hang up, hang up, said a voice. Your bridges are burned. It’s too late.
“Hello,” he said, swallowing heavily.
“Hello, who is this?”
Yes, who was it? He had tossed out the word father to a strange woman without thinking it over. Was it really a title he had earned?
“Gunnar,” he said, for lack of anything else.
“Gunnar who?” said the woman, in a west coast dialect. It sounded like the Gothenburg dialect and yet did not. “Gunnar Trolle?” she said a bit suspiciously. “Why are you calling? It’s been over for a long time, you know that.”
“Not Gunnar Trolle,” he said “Gunnar Nyberg.”
Silence. Had she hung up?
“Dad?” she said, almost inaudibly.
Her eyes, large as platters. Was it possible to keep going?
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Why…”
She fell silent.
“I’ve been thinking of you all recently,” he said.
“Are you sick?” she asked.
Yes, it’s something completely enormous.
“No. No, I-don’t know. I just have to make sure-that I didn’t completely destroy you. That’s all.”
“You promised never to contact us, Mom said.”
“I know. I kept my promise. The two of you are grown up now.”
“Pretty much,” she said. “We never talked about you. It was like you never existed. Bengt became our dad. Our real dad.”
“Bengt is your real dad,” he said. Who the hell was Bengt? “I’m something different. I would like to see you.”
“I only remember yelling and violence,” she said. “I don’t know what difference it would make.”
“Me neither. Would you forbid me to come?”
She was quiet. “No,” she said at last. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“You’re married,” he said, to hide the rejoicing inside him.
“Yes,” she said. “No kids yet. No grandchildren.”
“That’s not why I’m calling,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“How is Tommy?”
“Good. He lives in Stockholm. Östhammar. He has a son. There’s your grandchild.”
He received the small blows right on his nose cone, with a smile.
“And Gunilla?” he said hesitantly.
“She still lives in the house, with Dad. They’re thinking about switching to an apartment and getting a summer place.”
“Good idea,” he said. “Well, see you. I’ll be in touch.”
“ ’Bye,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”
He would. More than ever before. That soft Uddevala dialect. The girl who had spoken such pronounced Stockholmish. He remembered her little Stockholm-accented vowels so well. It was possible to become someone else. To change dialects and become someone else.
Then it hit him. There and then, it hit him.
There and then Gunnar Nyberg caught the Kentucky Killer.
He didn’t have to be an American. It would even have been more convenient to become some other nationality. Maybe not a Norwegian or a Kenyan, but something plausible.
He paged frantically through the lists. He went through name after name after name and ignored the stars.
Hjelm came in and regarded the intensely reading giant with surprise. An enormous aura of energy was rising up above him like a thunderhead.
“Hi yourself,” Hjelm said.
“Shut up,” Nyberg said amiably.
Hjelm sat down and shut up. Nyberg kept reading. Fifteen, twenty minutes went by.
April, May. May 3: Steiner, Wilhelm, Austria, born 1942; Hün, Gaz, Mongolia, born 1964; Berntsen, Kaj, Denmark, born 1956; Mayer, Robert, New Zealand, born 1947; Harkiselassie, Winston, Ethiopia, born 1960; Stankovski, B-
Gunnar Nyberg stopped short.
“Bing bang boom,” he roared. “The famous Kentucky Killer. Get a photo of Wayne Jennings. Now!”
Hjelm stared at him and slunk out, suddenly immeasurably subordinate. Nyberg stood up and paced, no ran, around the room, like an overfed rat in a tiny hamster wheel.